Letter to the Lethbridge Herald

Here is a recent letter in the Lethbridge Herald regarding the creationist/evolution debate. 

Academics favour evolution for good reason

Written by Alex Massé

Tuesday, 20 January 2009

In his letter (“Evolution debate is a battle of belief systems,” Jan. 15), H. Richard Friesen notes his belief system, which “includes a Creator God who designed every living thing around us,” is losing ground in “the lecture halls of academia.” Friesen’s explanation for this trend is a refusal among “unbelievers” to accept the consequences meted out by God in the afterlife. Friesen’s argument presupposes that academia is full of unbelievers in the first place. His failure to explain this hidden premise renders his argument rather self-defeating.     Why is it, then, that academics, the most educated career group in our society, tend disproportionately toward atheism and agnosticism? The explanation is quite simple. A belief system that includes evolution corresponds much more closely to observable reality than a belief system that relies on a mysterious floating sky-monster. Academics, whose job it is to engage in lifelong study of the best available evidence and come to the most reasonable conclusions based on that evidence, have tended, over time, to converge upon evolution as an explanation for life. The amount of evidence that has been provided in support of the theory of natural selection is staggering. Evolution has been more adequately accounted for than many theories to which theists regularly subscribe, including the theory of gravity. Friesen’s strongest argument against evolution stems from his own incredulity. He is awed by the stunning beauty and complexity of nature, and rightly so. However, I would think it much more likely that such beauty arose through several billion years of tediously slow progress than through a spontaneous six-day frenzy of magic followed by a nap. Alex Massé Lethbridge

Arson at former Syncrude Execs. House

"How long before we get the Earth Liberation Front out here, blowing up SUV's?"

This is what I "blogged" about eight months ago. I said that the result of marginalization of environmental and social groups is that these groups will continually seek further extreme measures to achieve their goals. This is exactly what happened this week when someone tossed molotov cocktails into the empty house of recently retired Syncrude president Jim Carter. The house cost a little less then one million dollars and is now a complete write off. Carter had been a target of vandalism before, in the summer of 2008 Carter's escalade had its windows shattered. 

The ability of the PC to turn Alberta into a corpocracy has forced someone to burn down a house. This is what happens when people are excluded from the democratic process. The Alberta government has been in bed with big oil for along time now despite the warnings of the danger of the tarsands and its unsightly byproducts and people have now "taken to arms". Now my suspicion is that the people who perpetuated this are in someway related to the fort chipewan band because they have no doubt been the worst affect by the tar-sands development but I don't suspect the person will be found because these activities are usually done with some foresight into an escape plan and are done in anonymity. 

Pipelines have also been attacked in northern alberta and british columbia which belong to Encana but these are suspected to be the result of local opposition to development as opposed to the widespread opposition to oil infrastructure development which is the reason why someone burned down carter's house. Now I don't condone these actions but I saw it coming and Alberta has it coming. 

Resist 2010

Blog for Class

As part of a University of Lethbridge course titled Money, Culture and Globalization this blog will be devoted to the class project to create a blog. While I haven't written on it in over six months, the topics will remain similar and i'll pretend people are actually reading it.